When winning takes a back seat

The field is often the site of a football coach’s greatest
triumphs. Don Morel can tell you what it’s like when the
field becomes the site of a coach’s worst nightmare. The
unpleasant journey that UW-Eau Claire and the family of Justin
Greenwood are beginning is one that Morel and the entire community
at the University of La Verne have been on for nearly a year.

In a Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference game
against Redlands last Oct. 24, quarterback Rollie Dykstra was
tackled while diving for the goal line on an option early in the
second quarter. The Leopard senior was helped off the field by the
trainer and a teammate, then appeared to suffer consecutive
seizures. He was taken to a local hospital and the game was
called.

“It was devastating, first and foremost,” Morel said.
“It was tragic that an accident like that happened. We felt
awful just for Rollie.”

In the days following Dykstra’s injury, La Verne’s 64
other players did not practice, and Azusa Pacific allowed La Verne
to cancel the next week’s game. Football, Morel said, just
wasn’t on the minds of the people at the 1,300-student school
about 30 miles east of Los Angeles.

“Everybody, not just the players and coaches, but everyone
in the La Verne community was affected,” he said.
“There was a period there when we weren’t sure if
Rollie would make it, period.”

According to news reports, Dykstra had surgery to relieve swelling
in his brain and spent three weeks in a coma. But he is alive and
recovering from his injuries in a rehabilitation center in
Bakersfield, Calif.

But Morel and the Leopards can’t visit Dykstra. In fact,
they don’t even receive updates on his condition anymore.
Though Morel says the NCAA has a $20 million catastrophic insurance
policy that covers Dykstra’s medical bills, the school
community still has to keep its distance due to fear of
litigation.

In the first week following the accident, Morel says he got phone
calls from high school, college and professional coaches who had
been through the same thing. Many recommended that the school
provide crisis counselors, and Morel says several of his players
met with such professionals. The university community gave the
football team space to work through their emotions, Morel said. The
rest of the season, he added, “became much, much bigger than
football.”

“We had 64 other guys that were really suffering at the time
while Rollie was in critical condition,” Morel said.
“One thing I learned was that every individual deals with it
differently. No two people are feeling the same thing at the same
time.”

Though the coach felt a range of emotions, eventually his team
would have to take the field again. Though they did, winning their
final two games, the emotions surrounding the game were never quite
the same.

In the first half of a 33-12 loss to Whittier Nov. 2, Morel
remembers his team looking “really out of it.

“I don’t think we got excited for another game,”
Morel said. “In fact, even though we won our last two games,
I think it was just a giant relief when the season was
over.”

Finishing the season at all meant more than winning.

“I think we pulled together as a team, a community and
school,” Morel said.

But being able to finish didn’t mean it was easy.

“Weeks after, it’s still a struggle,” Morel
said. “You start to question the game itself.”

Football, for all that’s great about it, is a dangerous
game, Morel acknowledges.

Around Division III, football communities can second that.

Greenwood

Greenwood, an Eau Claire linebacker, was injured on a
helmet-to-helmet hit against UW-River Falls on Saturday. Similar to
Dykstra, he had emergency brain surgery and has been
unconscious.

Ratliff

Shay Ratliff, one of Hardin-Simmons’ top receivers,
sustained a concussion in the season opener and is not only out for
the season, but has reportedly withdrawn from school.

Linfield defender Ray Lions cracked a vertebrae in his neck
(Around the West, Sept. 23) in the opener against Redlands and has
not played since.

For Morel’s team, the emotions from Dykstra’s ordeal
are still present.

“I don’t think it’s something you just get over
in a summer or a fall,” he said. “You don’t get
over it. In some way, it’s always there.”

Division III vs. the
rest
Early-season, pre-conference slate schedule openings leave plenty
of room for non-conference matchups. It’s also when Division
III teams see how they stack up against teams from other
classifications.

Though we can define “stack up” in several ways, as
there is certainly a range of team strengths within each
classification, here’s Division III’s record against
everyone else:

vs. D-II: 3-9
Some of these aren’t pretty, but then again, why is a
middle-of-the-pack ODAC team like Guilford scheduling Division II
power Carson-Newman, currently ranked No. 3? We don’t know,
but a 41-0 whooping is what one gets for such ambitiousness. Our
wins are Curry 22, Stonehill 16; Concordia-Moorhead 42, Moorhead
State 28 and UW-La Crosse 28, South Dakota 24. Nice work.

vs. NAIA: 23-15
Okay, the definitions get a little sticky here, but we don’t
define future Division III provisional members Crown (2004),
Tri-State (2004) or Northwestern, Minn. (2005) as Division
III’s yet, so their games are counted among the NAIA’s.
That other classification got a few cheap victories over Division
III’s brand-new program in Huntingdon, but then again
Division III got a few easy wins over Southern Virginia. The most
significant here is Linfield 47, NAIA No. 24 Southern Oregon 42.
NAIA No. 8 Asuza Pacific has beaten Pacific Lutheran and Cal
Lutheran, while No. 22 Walsh beat Westminster (Pa.) 43-20. For what
it’s worth.

Gagliardi
watch
No, no, we’re not projecting the winner of the Division III
version Heisman Trophy, although I still think that may not be a
bad idea. As St. John’s head coach John Gagliardi approaches
the all-time wins mark of 408, we thought we’d do more than
just blitz you with a story before the big game, like many national
media outlets will undoubtedly do. We asked you, the readers, to
share your experiences with the man many in Collegeville, Minn.,
call John.

Here’s our second story:
“I met John in July of 2002, shortly after graduating from
Ithaca College. I did not know that much about his program, seeing
as I had only been living and working in Minnesota for a few
weeks.

He easily agreed to meet me in his office for an interview on the
new turf at Clemens Stadium and the upcoming season. I spent,
easily 45 minutes to an hour in John’s office and we
discussed him and his football program for maybe 15 minutes.

That to me is John in a nutshell, he would much rather talk about
you than him. After the meeting, Jimmy Gagliardi and Gary Fashing
took me over to their office and gave me more reading material and
SJU information than I could [have] wanted, it just shows through
that the whole program is pure class and it all starts with
John.

When we traveled to McMinnville for the playoffs and what would be
win number 400, everyone involved was very excited. As a reporter I
was excited for a good game but really hoping for a win because it
would be a great story to cover. They won in exciting fashion and
as the clock winded down the 500 or so Johnnie fans started
chanting “400, 400.” It was something else. But after
the game we (the reporters and SJU fans) watched John walk quickly
towards the locker room.

That is pure Gagliardi as well, as I found out many times over the
year. You may want to talk about the win, especially when it was
number 400, but he knew that there was only a few days before the
next big game and he’d rather think about that.

Finally, John may be the most predictable coach off of the
football field. Ask John a question and nine times out of ten you
can guess the answer before it comes out. This teaches you to be
very creative with your questions, very quickly. This was quite
apparent in Oregon when the Saint Cloud-area media was done asking
him questions and the Oregon media started. After the first
reporter asked a common Gagliardi question, you could see all of
the St. Cloud media packing up to go home.”

— Jim McGraw, reporter

Quotable
Methodist hasn’t played in three weeks, but resumes its
slate against Emory & Henry on Saturday. The Monarchs did not
play their Sept. 20 game at Salisbury due to Hurricane Isabel, then
had a scheduled off week.

Methodist head coach Jim Sypult said his kids are anxious to play
another game.

“When they ask ‘when are we going to hit again?’
that’s a good sign,” Spyult said.

Dante
Washington

Stat of the
week
As often as we hear about Wooster’s Tony Sutton, he’s
got company leading the NCAA in rushing yards per game (220.3)
through this week.

Sutton and Dante Washington of Carthage are both juniors, and both
have rushed for 661 yards in three games. Washington has done it
with 82 carries (8.1 yards per) to Sutton’s 79 (8.4 per), but
the Wooster back has 11 touchdowns to Washington’s seven.

National game of the
week
There are several candidates, as ranked teams from the WIAC, OAC
and ODAC clash. There are also big games in the east and west, both
in- and out-of-conference. Who wants to pick just one when
there’s such a healthy list of games to watch: No. 8
UW-Stevens Point at No. 3 UW-La Crosse, No. 18 John Carroll at
No.10 Baldwin-Wallace, No. 14 Ithaca at No. 21 Springfield, No. 17
Bridgewater at No. 12 Hampden-Sydney, No. 4 Linfield vs. Pacific
Lutheran, No. 7 Rowan vs. TCNJ, No. 20 Washington & Jefferson
vs. Westminster (Pa.), No. 22 Bethel at UW-Eau Claire

Hindsight game of the
week
Again there were about 15 candidates under the close-game file,
and Christopher Newport’s win over Bridgewater did the most
work to the national polls. ATN’s game of the week last week
wasn’t a nail-biter, but we told you it would be a shootout.
Wooster affirmed its national rank with a 62-33 win over Case
Western.

Though kickers get dumped on quite a bit when linemen and
linebackers have jokes to crack, there isn’t a player in
Division III who wouldn’t want a guy as tough — or at
least as accurate — as Augustana’s Mike Clark on his
team.

The junior kicker hit a 54-yarder as time ran out to push the
Vikings past UW-Platteville, 27-26. It was the second time this
season that a kicker set a new Division record for longest
game-ending field goal.

Your
feedback
As always, Around the Nation is interested in your thoughts on
certain subjects. When you write in, please include your full name,
age, hometown and school you root for. Or use our feedback
form.

1. We’re still interested to hear why life is unique in your
corner of the Division III world. Take a minute and share
what’s great about your campus, your state, your team and the
people you know.

2. ATN is looking for more fond memories of longtime St.
John’s coach John Gagliardi.

3. ATN is still looking for the most unique player names in
Division III.

4. ATN wants to know what you think the spirit of Division III is,
and what it should be.

Attention
SIDs
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record books and other helpful tools from both conference and
school SIDs. The information is used when compiling Around the
Nation, and is a great help for feature stories. SIDs can also add
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Adam Turer graduated in 2006 from Washington and Lee University, where he was a two-year starter at free safety. He lives in Cincinnati and covers area high school sports in addition to his full-time job as an attorney. Adam has contributed to D3football.com since 2007 and is in his second season writing Around the Nation after spending four seasons writing Around the Mid-Atlantic.